Thomas Weibel02.07.2026Ticino’s Blenio Valley is home to a series of fortified cliff dwellings known as the ‘case dei pagani’ or ‘pagan houses’. These near-inaccessible ruins are the setting of many scary stories and continue to puzzle researchers to this day.
Thomas Weibel26.05.2026Walter Steiner from Winterthur invented the Stewi in 1947. What started out as a folding rotary clothes line was to become a design classic that graced Swiss gardens for decades.
Thomas Weibel15.01.2026In the 1950s, the Swiss dreamed of having their own nuclear power plant and built a test facility in Lucens in the canton of Vaud. It proved an ill-fated project: just after becoming operational in January 1969 a fuel rod melted and exploded, bringing Switzerland to within a hair’s breadth of a disastrous outcome.
Thomas Weibel11.11.2025Street signposting in Switzerland takes the form of white writing on a blue background. But not in Bern’s old town, where the street signs are red, green, yellow, black and white. The City of Bern inherited this bright design from the French military campaign in 1798.
Thomas Weibel21.08.2025In the late 1860s, the rural canton of Fribourg was staking everything on industrialisation. Guillaume Ritter, a young engineer from Neuchâtel with bold plans for revolutionary ‘long-distance mechanical power transmission’ therefore came along at just the right moment.
Thomas Weibel21.01.2025The menhirs of Clendy are impressive remnants of the Stone Age. Both mystical and mysterious, the standing stones on the southern shore of Lake Neuchâtel take us on a journey back in time to a long-forgotten era.
Thomas Weibel05.09.2024For 125 years, the 'funiculaire' in the city of Fribourg has been running on a particular kind of renewable energy: wastewater. The 'funi', as the heritage-listed railway is known locally, is an important reminder of Fribourg's industrial past.
Thomas Weibel11.04.2024For generations, the clanking sound of bins being emptied was an everyday morning sound in Switzerland. The noise came from the hot-dip galvanised steel rubbish bins designed by resourceful Zurich entrepreneur Jakob Ochsner.
